Hello - and welcome to my, er, bi-monthly column.
All this web surfing and participating on Usenet isn't having any positive effects on my study results. Therefore, I'll try to cut it down a little, but for those interested - don't worry; I'll keep sending in a submission for OS/2 CONNECT now and then.
BAMBA PHONE
Speaking of Usenet; I remember hefty discussions going on back in September (okay, so I used DejaNews to verify that) about IBM's Bamba technology for streaming audio/video over Internet. There was only a Windows version available from the Alphaworks site. Lots of people posted complaints about this on the Bamba forum.
This resulted in a native OS/2 Bamba plugin for Netscape, "due to high demand from the OS/2 community". Now, history repeats itself (will IBM ever learn?) with BambaPhone. BambaPhone extends the Bamba technology to use it as an Internet video-telephony application. Again, it is only available for Windows. But this time, I don't see any ranting posts on comp.os.os2.multimedia, nor is the BambaPhone forum on Alphaworks very crowded. What's perhaps the most tragic, is that the Windows community itself doesn't seem too interested in BambaPhone, as all the (three) postings on the forum at the time of this writing are, you guessed it, requests for an OS/2 version.
To make a long story short, I urge everyone to register at Alphaworks and voice their opinion. We must keep up the image of the OS/2 community - we're not letting IBM get away with this!
MORE ARTICLES
So, and what have I been doing the past months? For starters, I've written another article in the Dutch PC-Active magazine, this time on Process Commander. When I wrote it, I was a little afraid I would let myself be influenced by other reviews, such as the one in OS/2 e-Zine!. I am happy to say that didn't happen, and the article turned out as I had hoped. If you want to view it yourself, you can find the article on-line at http://www.pc-active.nl/91/processc.htm. Some illustrations from the printed version were left out, but the text is complete! Beware, though, it's in Dutch.
My next project will be a review of Truespectra Photo>Graphics 1.04, a graphics application for Warp that is, in my opinion, highly underrated. More info on Photo>Graphics can be found at http://www.truespectra.com. By the way, to any OS/2 developers out there, send your press releases to press@database.nl. You may have a chance of getting some attention in one of Database's publications (such as PC-Active)!
MIRO
A few weeks back, as an author for PC-Active, I had the opportunity to attend a press demonstration of Miro's latest video editing hardware. I learned a few interesting facts from the guy who performed the demo. Before I had a chance to ask, he brought up the point that there is no OS/2 support for their latest product (named DC10), actually no support for any platform besides Windows 95. The reason is, that they must use Video for Windows in order to enable their customers to share their home-made movies with others. Understandable, because not everyone has hardware MJPEG compression built in, and VfW is the lowest common denominator. It brings up some interesting problems, though. For example, VfW doesn't recognize or play movies bigger than 1GB. That sounds like very much, but in S-VHS quality, that's only a few minutes of video. Because Microsoft refuses to do something about that problem, Miro (and their competitors) are forced to develop their own workaround. In this case, they've managed to create an "AVI caching" method, that stretches the limit to 2GB. Some other little facts you might like to know:
* Video for Windows is totally 16-bit (also under NT!);
* Ever had a chuckle about the little rounding error Windows 3.1's Calculator had? Hold on to your chair, then. MS' VidCap32 applet, included with the Miro card, captures exactly 8.62 seconds of video when you set the time limit to 10.00 seconds. That's a 13.8% error!
* Why isn't Windows NT supported? Well, once Miro wrote drivers for NT 3.51, but then Microsoft changed the driver model and they could throw away their work. And with the introduction of ActiveMovie, everything is bound to change again, so they're waiting for that.
TEAM OS/2
Team OS/2 activity in the Netherlands is practically non-existent these days: only at computer fairs, some "hard core" Teamers see each other. Robin Vley (web master of "Viper's OS/2 page", at http://www.os2net.demon.nl) and I hope to bring some change to this situation: With the recent resurrection of the newsgroup nl.comp.os.os2 and, hopefully, a sponsored (but not by IBM) Team OS/2 NL web site in the near future, we think we can revive interest a little. You can mail me if you want more info on the status of this project!
That's about all I have to say for now. Until next time, when I hope to be able to say something nice about IBM - for example, if they release the Warp 4 SMP client. Please do not hesitate to send me any news and information pertaining to the Netherlands you would like mentioned in this column.
Reinout van Schouwen is a student in the Netherlands and is interested in Artificial Intelligence. He started using OS/2 in November 1994 and became an active Team OS/2 member a few months later.
